Further reflections on acceptable behavior

In the comments of my post on The Reddit misogyny issue, “No Excuses.“, reader Tony B said something interesting:

Agreeing that [the Reddit response to a 15 year old posting a picture of herself with a book] are in poor taste, I’d like to go deeper and consider the minutiae of what should be acceptable and what should not. Because that, unlike hearing yet another argument over the definition of feminism, privilege, etc would actually be interesting. If there’s no interest in that sort of thing it’s not a problem. I just knew I couldn’t have that conversation on a huge place like Pharyngula without being completely drowned out by the groupthink that goes on there.

I agree: we should discuss this, and we have not discussed this enough. After all, JT can joke about kidnapping me and raping me all he wants (Okay, that’s never actually happened, but he could) and I will laugh my fool head off and probably bite him, but when strange Reddit atheists do it to a 15 year old girl, we cry foul.

Obviously, different folks might disagree over where to draw the line; That’s okay. This social issue falls on a continuum of acceptable——unacceptable, so we’ll likely discover difficulty in arriving at a consensus. That likelihood doesn’t mean we can’t make a valiant effort, though.